


Ghosts of the Jedi

by SpaceWall



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Anakin’s dubious love life advice, And I think I’m funny, Canon Compliant, F/M, Families of Choice, Force Ghost(s), Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Marriage Proposal, OT3, Objectively, Post-Canon, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, So many damn force ghosts, Sometimes just a comedy, Spoilers!, but also sometimes feelings are hard, technically, this is a funny premise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:07:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21914173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceWall/pseuds/SpaceWall
Summary: Spoiler for The Rise of Skywalker in story & Notes.It’s only been over for a few days when Rey starts being haunted. She has all the ghosts she could ask for, except one.
Relationships: Finn & Rose Tico, Poe Dameron/Finn, Poe Dameron/Finn/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, past - Relationship
Comments: 30
Kudos: 203





	1. Rey

**Author's Note:**

> In which this author is going to have her cake and eat it too, damnit, because she likes All The Ships. Also, yes, more Force Ghosts than is reasonable but fuck it, if Rey Is All The Jedi (tm), then she can have All The Ghosts.

Rey could see ghosts, now. It was becoming a fact of life, like the daily flow of the rebellion into a system of government. Like the steady weight of her lightsaber, better balanced for her hand than Anakin’s ever was, than Leia’s ever could have been. She’d taken crystals from both, cutting them to make something steady, something that was hers. There was little pride to be had in the fact that it was a more focused blade than Ben had ever built. Perhaps she would have been better able to gloat if he was ever one of the ghosts who came to see her. 

It was the familiar ones, at first. Luke and Leia. Often together, but not always. Leia was never really done with her rebellion, and she helped Rey help them. Luke never came for that. His guidance came when her heart still felt empty when she thought of the enormity of the life lost. He helped her as her heart beat too fast and her lungs threatened to close up when she remembered the feeling of Palpatine in the force. 

The first stranger was Obi-Wan Kenobi, a few days after. After. It still felt like such a heavy word. After the First Order. After Leia. After Ben. 

Obi-Wan didn’t feel like a stranger, really. He’d been with her since the beginning, even if she hadn’t known it at the time. 

“You guided me to it,” she said. They were back at the rebel base, but it was the middle of the night, and now that it was After, most species actually needed to sleep. In her hand was her first lightsaber, Anakin’s lightsaber, and Luke’s, but now hers. 

He nodded. He was younger than she’d always imagined him, with a trim beard and an almost military bearing. Aside from the glowing blue, he wouldn’t have been out of place in any one of Finn and Poe’s command meetings. 

“You needed it. That lightsaber has been given as a gift before. It ought to have been again.”

He said it so simply, as if he hadn’t been arming Palpatine’s granddaughter. “For all you knew, I was going to be just another monster.”

Kenobi drifted closer, walking without his feet ever touching the ground, and took a seat beside Rey on the crate. He wasn’t quite tangible, but his presence in the force was warm the way Luke’s was, and steady, like Leia’s. 

“You weren’t,” he corrected, “and even if you had been, it would not have been the first time that blade was used for terrible evil. Remember, Anakin held it first.”

There’d always been something haunted about the blade. Perhaps it was the blood shed as much as it was Kenobi’s continued presence. She set it aside, beside Leia’s, and closed her eyes to meditate. When the sun rose, and she next focused in on the world around her, Obi-Wan was gone and Finn was sitting beside her, waiting for her to finish.

“Breakfast?” He asked, and took her hand and led her from her ghosts, at least for a few minutes. 

She spent as much time with the living as with the dead. For one thing, she liked them better, and for another, the dead would never have allowed anything different. Luke insisted that company was important, and Leia that Poe and Finn needed her as much as she needed them. Obi-Wan, who, once introduced, joined their chorus in earnest, told her that two generations of Jedi alone in the wilderness was more than enough. 

With their guidance, she made her lightsaber, and buried those she’d first used on Tatooine. It seemed like the place where they belonged. Neither would be fully functional now, of course, but she thought all the important pieces except the crystals were there. Perhaps there were even enough crystals, if you combined what was left in each. 

“So, you want to be a Skywalker.” She was in the cockpit of her – Luke’s, really – X-wing, and she was flying back from Tatooine. His hands overlaid hers as, with deft certainty, he flicked switches and turned dials. It was a little cramped for a girl and a ghost, and Rey said as much. 

The ghost, who was Anakin Skywalker, made himself slightly less inconvenient, as Rey jumped to hyperspace. Tatooine was far from anywhere, and she had a ways to go until she reached her next destination. 

“I do,” she told him. It was a certainty she’d been working on for days. “I hope you don’t mind?”

Anakin shook his head. He seemed more solid than any of her other ghosts, radiating power despite his death. “No, I don’t. But I am a little surprised. A girl from Jakku should know that Skywalker is a slave name.”

Maybe it had been, once. But that didn’t really matter now. “It’s a far better name than the one I was born to.”

Anakin’s hands rested again on the controls. In death, he was still a pilot. Frankly, it was a miracle he and Luke weren’t grappling over them. Luke was never content to let her fly in peace either. 

“It’s my mother’s name,” he said, eventually. “She gave it to me, although by rights I suppose my Master should have named me too. Instead, she gave it to me herself. Anakin Skywalker. But I didn’t give it to Luke. Properly, he and Leia both should have been Naberries. Obi-Wan gave Luke the Skywalker name. He’s from the Core; he didn’t know what it meant.”

Rey thought that, even though she had never been a slave the way people of Tatooine were slaves, then at least she knew what it meant in a way that a man like Obi-Wan Kenobi never could. She thought that Finn did, too. 

“It’s not a slave name any more,” she said. “The people who hold it aren’t slaves.”

She’d never seen a ghost cry before, but Anakin’s eyes shone with unshed tears. He told her, “none of us who held it died slaves.”

In the force, she could sense another ghost. Not powerful enough to be tangible, but present, just outside her line of sight. Anakin took her hand, and then they were both gone. 

His last words, as he vanished, lingered long after she was back with the living. “We’re glad that you’re one of ours.”

She told Finn about it, of course, because he understood better than anybody what was in a name. She talked to Jannah about it too, for the same reason. All the defectors understood what it was to come from nothing, to have an absence of identity, even if they couldn’t understand the pain of finding it. 

“I think,” Finn told her, “that he means it doesn’t matter whose blood you have. Not just a Jedi, but a Skywalker.”

They were sharing a moment of physical intimacy, as they often did when they were alone. At the moment, Finn was trying to figure out how to braid her hair, which Rey was sure would result in nothing but pain later. But he’d wanted to try, and since Rey had never actually had anyone who could do it for her in a pinch, she thought it might be useful. Besides, it was reassuring to have his hands running through her hair. Having Finn touching her was the only thing that made her feel connected to another person the way she had with Ben. It wasn’t the same, of course. What they’d been was unparalleled. Even Yoda, the eldest of her ghosts, had never seen anything quite like it. But Finn was here, and he had always treated her with love, and that mattered too.

She dreamed about Ben, sometimes, and about Kylo too. They were only dreams, she thought, but they still set her heart racing, made her stomach churn. She’d watched Kylo Ren cut down Ben a hundred times. She’d felt her hand slice through Ben, Palpatine dead behind her. But it was just dreams, not even visions. Rey was sure of that. 

They were on some planet ending with O, and her ghost of the day was a long-haired Jedi called Qui-Gon Jinn. He wasn’t saying much. Instead, he sat at a distance, and meditated as they watched the sun rise. Rey would have asked him what he wanted, who he was, but Poe was there with her too, holding her hand. Finn was off commanding legions elsewhere, with Jannah. 

“I’m sorry you didn’t get more time together,” Poe said. He was usually pretty dense about these things, but not always. Not now. He squeezed her hand.

She squeezed back. “It’s okay.” It wasn’t. “It’ll be okay, in the end.”

“You can talk to me about it, if you want.”

Even though she knew that Kylo Ren and Ben Solo were not entirely the same man, it was still a terrible thing to ask. Poe had been tortured by that man, once upon a time. “I wouldn’t ask that of you.”

Poe didn’t let go of her hand, but did turn to give her a disbelieving look. Mock-offended, he cried, “Rey, you wound me! I thought we were friends. Friends talk to each other about these sorts of things.”

She couldn’t not smile at that. Poe, pleased to have achieved his goal, wrapped an arm around her shoulder. Before them, the sun began to rise over the still surface of the lake, and Qui-Gon Jinn stood. Then, wavering in the light of the sun, he was gone.

“If friends talk about these sort of things, then why haven’t I heard a word about you and your-” oh kriff, what was her name? “lady love.”

“My lady love?” It took Poe a while to catch on. “Oh, no. That was over a long time ago. I mean, I tried, but I never could have been earnest about it.”

Rey had to ask, “why not? She seemed… nice.”

It was Poe’s turn to laugh, although Rey hadn’t really meant it to be funny. “Oh, nice as a Hutt in a bad mood. We just grew apart, I think.”

Rey could feel that there was more to it than that, a faint prickling under her skin. “What’s the rest of the story?”

Poe sighed, and pulled away from her touch. When he spoke, his voice was soft, surprisingly vulnerable. Leia was there, just to his other side, and Rey wondered if Poe could feel how much she loved him. 

“It wouldn’t have worked out with Zorii because I’m in love with someone else.” He knew Rey would ask the obvious question. “With Finn. You know, in case it wasn’t already hopeless enough.”

Blood had run to his face in shame, and he looked as though he might cry. Leia reached out, a light breeze stirring his hair as she said, “oh Poe,” in the slightly embarrassed, deeply fond way she always had.  
If Poe knew that they weren’t alone, he paid it no mind. Rey took his hand back forcefully. Finn was her friend, but Poe was, too, and she didn’t like seeing him like this. He stared down at their entwined fingers. 

“Why is it hopeless?” Rey was hardly an expert, but if she and Ben could find… something, then it didn’t seem like many things should be impossible.

“Because,” Poe breathed out the words like he had no other choice, “he’s in love with someone else too.”

He pulled his hand from Rey’s and walked away purposefully. Leia followed him out.

They were leaders of the galaxy now, and really, they should be acting like adults about this. But Rey couldn’t really help herself from pulling Finn into an alcove the next time she saw him and demanding, “why didn’t you tell me you were in love?”

If Poe had flushed with embarrassment, Finn did almost the opposite as he stepped back into the wall. He looked scared and a little nauseated. There were no ghosts, but the force was buzzing softly around him, as it usually did. Finn would never be a Jedi. Yoda had been clear about that, when Rey had asked. Yet, the ghosts seemed to treat him differently than they did everyone else. They talked and moved in front of him as though he could actually see them, and although he’d never said anything about it, he sometimes moved where they pointed, or looked at what they directed him to.

“I tried to tell you in the sand,” he said, “but I didn’t really want to tell you and Poe at the same time, and I didn’t really think I had enough time to say both, and then he kept asking and it was so awkward and-” Rey held up her hand to silence him. This rambling tendency they’d all picked up from Poe didn’t really get them anywhere, most of the time, even if it was fun. “I’m in love with both of you, and I didn’t want to say anything. Especially after Kylo. Ben. Sorry.”

Rey had learned, from the mistakes of all the Jedi who came before her, the difference between leaving in anger and walking away. 

“We’ll talk later,” she said, “I just need a minute.”

Already, Anakin and Obi-Wan were there. Obi-Wan guided her away, and Anakin stayed with Finn. Finn was Anakin’s favourite, and they were often to be found in each other’s company.

The trouble was, Rey reflected, as she hovered off the ground, moving a series of borrowed wrenches and drill bits around her in the force, that she loved them too. Rey had other friends – Jannah, Chewie, Rose, her ever-growing pack of droids and ghosts – but she loved Finn and Poe. Her life wouldn’t be the same without them in it. But she was a Jedi, and she’d already had her shot at love. A deeper, more fundamental love. And that person found her so repulsive that he wasn’t even haunting her. 

“I wish you were kinder to yourself,” Obi-Wan said. He was older than he usually presented himself to her, with a grandfatherly smile plastered to his face. 

Qui-Gon, who’d appeared behind him, rolled his eyes. “If I had a credit for every time I said the same to you, I would be a very wealthy man.”

“No, you’d be dead.”

Rey wondered if she could strangle ghosts. They must have sensed that she was hurting, because both of them sobered up. 

“Rey,” Qui-Gon said, “most Jedi can’t manifest corporeally. Even fewer can interact with this plane of existence, as Luke and Yoda do. It is a skill that must be learned when living, save for a few exceptions.”

“One exception,” Obi-Wan corrected, and Rey didn’t have to ask to know that it was Anakin Skywalker. 

There were other, lesser ghosts, spirits who had been Jedi and only touched the very edges of Rey’s mind when she was already deep in the force. But Ben was not even that.

“He may also be tired,” Obi-Wan told her. “Going into the force is a true rest. It took Qui-Gon decades to commune with the living fully, and he was as fine a master of the living force as I ever knew.”

They were being generous, comforting. “Is he even enough of a Jedi to do it?”

Just because Ben had been no Sith did not make him a Jedi. He would have hated that. Everything in him had wanted to reject the false narrative that there were only two paths, and that they were a matter of destiny.

“Of course,” Qui-Gon said, as if it were obvious. “He is at peace with the force, and he always understood the way it touched everything. That is enough.”

Suspended in the air, in the force, in the infinite light and darkness that stretched through generations to end in her, Rey allowed herself to cry. 

She met more ghosts, and went on vacation to Ryloth. One, who called herself Ahsoka, led Rey to a family with a child, no more than six, who was bright in the force. 

“If you ever need help,” Rey found herself saying, to the silent nodding of the ghost, “please, let me know. And if he ever decides he wants to learn more about his gifts, I would be honoured to teach him.”

She thought that the ghost approved. 

Ahsoka followed her from Ryloth, to Cato Neimoiida and Saleucami and Hoth. Rey was rebuilding the name of the Jedi, from the ground up. The other ghosts left them alone, and, after a while, Finn and Poe stopped calling every day. She’d left the droids with them, too. It seemed wrong to force anyone else to come with her while she made everything worse. 

“I hope they figure out that they should love each other,” Rey said, mostly to herself and somewhat to the ghost. “I just want them both to be happy.”

“Maybe they’d be happier,” replied Ahsoka, “if you were there.”

It was the first time she’d spoken in their many weeks together. “I didn’t know you could talk.”

“Usually, I get accused of not being able to stop.”

She was Anakin’s apprentice, and she wasn’t quite a Jedi. Like Luke and Leia, she’d only been dead a short while.

“Why are you the one who’s with me?” Luke would have been a more appropriate choice, or Anakin or Obi-Wan. Not Leia; it would have been wrong to see her away from the Resistance.

“Because Anakin asked me to be.” 

As if that explained anything at all. 

Ahsoka guided her to the remains of old Jedi temples, showing her where there were the records of the order and its beliefs. She never talked about Ben and Kylo, about Finn and Poe. Instead, she showed Rey what it was to be a lightsider without simply being a Jedi.

Rey was powerful, and under Luke and Leia’s tutelage she had become great. Those months, without the burden of the war and Ben and the expectation of an entire civilization riding on her shoulders, made her an expert. She learned to touch the force freely and joyfully, to allow it into her every breath. There were force sensitive children all over the galaxy, and with Ahsoka as her guide, she sought them out. The vast majority were in happy homes, and Rey taught them a few tricks to better handle themselves and was on her way. If she had been running the way Luke had once run, she would have been infinitely easy to track. Every family with a child even vaguely sensitive to the force had her personal comm number. 

She was in hyperspace when it happened. Hand to her heart as if she feared it would stop, Rey knew something was wrong even before the ghosts came to her. Luke and Leia, Ahsoka, as usual, and Anakin. Of all of them, only he looked truly afraid. She input the coordinates they gave her and turned for home.

Poe met her as she landed. His arm was in a sling, but otherwise he didn’t look hurt, just angry.

“Where in all the Sith Hells were you?” He snapped. He’d waited until they were alone, at least. The anger didn’t last. It had been more than replaced by sadness when he continued, “he almost died. They just got him out of the Bacta tank this morning.”

Rey wanted to take his hand. “I’m sorry, I just needed–”

She almost choked on her own tongue. Finn was lying in a hospital bed, sleeping off the last of the Bacta, and he wasn’t alone.

Ben gave her an appropriately guilty look. He was floating in the air beside Finn’s head, sitting cross-legged. For once, Anakin and Leia were both absent when Finn and Poe were there.

“Sorry,” Ben said, as if that was going to cut it, “I didn’t think you’d want him hurt. And besides, I sort of owe him one.”

Oh, force. “Poe,” she said, “I need a minute, because my dead soulmate is haunting this room, and I am going to kill him.”

Months without a word, and here he was, saving someone else who was in love with her. Why? What did he mean by it?

Poe, to his credit or maybe to Leia’s, didn’t ask any questions. He turned in place and left the way they’d came. Ben folded his hands in his lap, going from cross-legged to standing. 

“I hate you,” Rey told him. She refused to cry. 

“Sorry,” said Ben, for the second time. “Does it make it better or worse that Yoda had to convince me you actually did want to see me.”

The little troll was unnerving, so, “worse.” She sat by Finn’s bedside, in a chair, like a normal person. “Why don’t you explain from the beginning, and we can go from there.”

He told her that it had taken him weeks to come to form in the force, to rest from all Palpatine had taken from him, all he had taken from himself. “Anakin was the only person who knew I was there. He had both in him, too, and he just sort of knows these things. I think he made it so I can manifest at all.” By the time he’d been well enough and himself enough to come, Rey had been beginning to heal herself. “I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life tied to the past. You deserve better than that. Then Anakin sent Ahsoka to take you on a spirit quest, and told me I had as long as that took to figure myself out. So I just started… watching them. I knew they were your friends.”

Rey felt so sick. “You saved them.”

Ben looked down at Finn again. “He saved Dameron, mad bastard. I just helped, a bit.”

“You scared Anakin.”

Turning his hands over, Ben revealed scars coating the palms of his hands, as if from contact burns. “Turns out I’m not quite dead enough to be immune to explosions. As long as you live, a part of me lives.”

Why did everyone Rey loved keep trying to die for each other? “And what does that mean for me?”

Ben kissed her. It didn’t feel real, but the warmth in the force made her want to sink into it forever. His heart didn’t beat, and there was no breath on his lips. “It means,” said Ben, “that you and I will always be connected, in a way. But that doesn’t have to be the only connection in your life, nor should it.”

Rey loved him so much. “You have to promise to come visit.”

She couldn’t ask him to stay; staying was exhausting, for them. There was a reason Ahsoka didn’t talk much. Finn shifted in his sleep. 

“I’ll do you one better,” Ben said, a mischievous glint in his eye that was so like his father’s. “I’ll help you seduce the Generals of the Resistance.”

Why had Rey wanted him back again?


	2. Poe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe, Finn and Rey fall into a steady rhythm. Adjusting to the presence of ghosts you can’t see is a little... weird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, to Poe’s credit he’s taking this all remarkably well.

Poe thought it was to his credit that he’d reacted to the news that he was being haunted by his ex-boss and an assortment of other Jedi with no more than a “yes, and?” But really, even for Rey, this was all a bit much. It was probably a good thing, therefore, that Finn was now awake and asking all the awkward questions Poe hadn’t had the balls to. Most of the time it was, “are there any here right now?”

At that point, Rey would usually shake her head, or point at some empty patch of air and say a name. 

“It’s not that I think it’s weird,” Finn confided in him one night. They were in their quarters. They had been Finn’s, once upon a time, but when Rey was off on her spirit quest, and they’d both cleared the air and admitted that they were idiots, it seemed a waste of valuable space not to share when they were together. “Actually, it’s almost scary how normal it feels. I’ve always been able to sense them a bit, and now I know I’m not crazy. I just wish I knew how Rey felt about the whole thing.”

In Poe’s imagination, it was probably awful, to be haunted by the ghost of her ex-boyfriend while knowing that her other two friends were hopelessly in love with her. “I think we just have to work on making sure she doesn’t feel uncomfortable.”

They’d been so guilty, when she hadn’t come back from Ryloth. This was her home, after all, and she deserved to feel like she had a place in the Resistance. Jannah had chewed them out about all their mistakes repeatedly, in case it hadn’t hurt enough already. Mostly, she’d worried, as they both had, that they’d put Rey under pressure to reciprocate their feelings when she was still grieving.

The thing was, they loved Rey. Even if they both knew that the way she loved them would never be the same as the way they love her, it didn’t matter. They wanted her to be happy, even if that happiness was with ghosts. Even if it was with Ben Solo, as much as it made Poe’s heart hurt.

Finn strained as he shifted in place. The faint scars on his chest from the burns were still fading. Poe wanted to hate them, but he couldn’t, really. They were part of Finn now, and hating them would be cruel.

“We have to talk to her too,” Finn said, “I did tell her I loved her, and she wanted to talk about it. She just wanted to take a minute.”

“Bit of a long minute.”

Finn was always inclined to be generous. “The love of her life just died. If you died and her and Ben said they were in love with me, I might need a long minute too.”

There was so much to unpack in that sentence. First and foremost, they hadn’t even said I love you yet, let alone that they were planning to do this forever. But Finn was never one to do anything by half measures. Even when he and Rose had broken up, they’d determined to spend the majority of their time off together, and had declared themselves best friends for life.

For lack of anything better to say, Poe kissed him on the lips. They’d gotten good at it, over the last few weeks, and it still made him feel hot and giddy like a kid to know that Finn felt the same. 

Now that he knew the ghosts were watching him, Poe tried to be extra careful not to do anything that would really disappoint Leia. Except, of course, when he was alone. Then he tried to do things that would drive Leia absolutely mental. That went on for almost three weeks before Rey cornered him. 

“You have to stop scratching at your earwax! If I hear one more ghost telling me you’re going to puncture an ear drum, I’m going to puncture one for you.” 

Poe couldn’t keep the smile off his face. Rey, long suffering, put her head in her hands. She’d been training, probably. She was wearing lose-fitting clothes and sweating. Her hair had come partly undone and Poe, reflexively, reached out to tuck it behind an ear. Rey’s eyes widened, and then she glanced behind him as she usually did when there was a ghost with her. Whatever the ghost said made her flush scarlet, high in her cheeks.

“Would you and Finn be free for dinner tonight?”

His schedule was probably busy, but this was more important. “We can be.” 

From then on, whenever the three of them were on the same planet, they were together. Between the three of them, they’d almost learned to cook and do dishes, and once they pooled all their rations, they had lots of options. Besides, food was easier to come by every day, as worlds joined them, one after another. The topics of conversation ranged wildly. Sometimes they spoke of work or philosophy. Rey taught them a great deal of what she’d learned from Luke and Leia, although Finn could barely use it and Poe couldn’t at all. Rey told them at the very beginning that she’d ordered away all her ghosts from their quarters barring emergencies, except for Ben. 

“He’s not here much,” she’d said, “but it seems wrong to ban him since, you know.”

Poe didn’t, really, but he was trying to. They were all trying, and that was enough. 

One day, Rey came to him in his office, and locked the door behind her. Poe sat up seriously. He’d been sketching dreamily in the margins of a memo about recruiting cargo pilots. 

“Master Skywalker?” 

She shook her head. “Not Master. We’re… working on it.” That was the We she usually used when the ghosts were involved. “Knight, for now.”

“What do you need, Knight Skywalker?”

“Jannah and I have been thinking,” she said, which was probably the start of nothing good, “that Finn might like it if we had a birthday party for him. Only, you know, the day when it makes the most sense to have it is sort of awkward.”

Finn’s birthday; the day Poe had been tortured by Kylo Ren, and met the love of his life. And Rey’s, he guessed, in a roundabout way. Also, the death of the New Republic.

“Maybe just us? And Jannah and Rose.”

In the end, it was just them and Rose. Since this was apparently the right time of year for miracles – free Stormtroopers, Jedi in the desert, lightsabers in Maz’s basement – Jannah received a comm from Lando saying that he’d found her grandmother, and had taken off for Corellia at once. They were all happy for her, but it was a shame she couldn’t have been there to see the look on Finn’s face when Rey presented him with a cake and Poe draped a trim brocade jacket around his shoulders and kissed him. Rose arrived late from her shift, with wine and handwoven friendship bracelets, and made him cry all over again. Rey carried her home at one in the morning, when they were all very drunk and the force was really the only thing holding any of them upright. Poe stayed on the couch, hoping the room would stop drifting lazily in place like a mirage. Finn, who’d gone limp with content as a lothcat in the sun, burrowed into his side. 

“Thank you,” he whispered. 

Poe hoped he was only being thanked for the party. “I mean, it’s your birthday, sort of. Now we just need to get one of the ghosts to tell us when Rey’s is.”

Finn mumbled something into his chest, and then raised his head to repeat himself. “Ben says ‘t’s next month.”

“Can you always hear ghosts when you’re drunk?” Poe pulled a blanket off the back of the couch onto them. Finn looked like he was going to fall asleep, and, frankly, they’d both slept in worse places.

Finn considered the proposition. “No. I think he’s trying really hard.”

Because of course, he loved Rey too. “Thank you, Ben,” Poe said, hoping he wasn’t talking to thin air. 

He didn’t think he imagined the way the blanket tucked in a little tighter.

So they had a birthday party for Rey next month, with all the droids, Rose, Chewie, and Jannah, and Jannah’s grandmother, and a half-dozen other friendly faces. And, based on the way Rey’s eyes darted around the room, a few too many ghosts for comfort. 

“How did you do this?” She whispered in Poe’s ear, when they were alone, “and don’t try to deny it.”

As though lying to a Jedi ever worked out. “Ben told Finn it was your birthday.”

The unguarded smile she gave him made the entire effort worthwhile. 

At the beginning, Poe had thought he was only in love with Finn, and Finn was only in love with Rey, and Rey was only in love with Ben Solo. Now he wasn’t sure if any of those things were true. When Rey had gone to Ryloth, Finn had confessed, rather tearfully, that the whole thing was his fault for being in love with both of them. That had disproven one count, and over the next few weeks, the way Poe missed her – the way he missed seeing her and Finn together – disproved a second. So now, the only question was, did Rey feel the same? Could she feel the same, or was she destined to spend her life pining after a ghost?

Things went on like this for the rest of the year, to the anniversary of their victory – which was, for Rey, the anniversary of Ben’s death – and then beyond. She went back to Tatooine to pay her respects, and returned with a pissy sixteen-year-old apprentice whose origins most certainly went in flagrant violation of Tatooine’s so-called laws. She never said it in as many words, but Poe thought that Rey had probably killed his Master, or at least stolen him away in the dead of night. He was pretty sure that the rest of the Jedi ghosts approved, too. At least, that was what Finn said, and Finn was usually right about that sort of thing. Rey had been teaching him, too, and if he meditated deeply and surely enough, he could hear them. Or, rather, he could hear Anakin and Ben. Anakin, who was the strongest of the lot, and Ben, who was still tied, in some intangible way, to Rey.

With the imminent prospect that Rey was going to leave them to found a Jedi order for real, rather than simply dart around the galaxy when she was needed to give parents some support, Poe knew they had to say something. But it was immeasurably hard.

In the end, the ghost did it for them. They were having dinner together, the three of them – Poe wondered if this would be their last – when they were interrupted by Rey’s glass throwing itself across the room into a wall. Finn screamed. Rey waved her hand decisively and pieced it back together. 

“Apologies,” she muttered darkly, glaring at an empty corner. “Some people don’t know when to leave well enough alone.”

Since they were in Rey’s quarters and alone, it really could only have been Ben. He’d been dead for a year now, but Poe imagined that probably didn’t make it hurt any less. 

Finn asked, “do the two of you want some privacy?”

“No,” Rey said, sounding somewhat desperate, “we don’t. Although I would appreciate it if you left well enough alone, Ben Solo.” 

It was like listening to someone making a private comm. “Really?”

Rey sighed, and put her head in her hands. Finn shot Poe a concerned look, and then closed his eyes as he usually did when he was trying to access the force. Whatever he was planning to do there, he didn’t need it. 

Head still in her hands, Rey said, “Ben is fed up with trying to help me romance you. He says if I’m going to keep completely kriffing it up, then I might as well be blunt about it.” She stressed the word ‘romance’ as if she was quoting someone, a bit ironically.

There was a slow moment. Finn looked at Poe again. Though Poe couldn’t really communicate in the force, he tried hard to use Finn’s psychic abilities to communicate his enthusiasm for the whole prospect. 

Finn said, “I don’t think you have messed up, actually.” His voice was strained, as if his throat had gone dry. Poe felt much the same. 

Rey looked down at her once-shattered glass, and then finally, finally, met Poe’s eyes. Hers were soft and brown as caramel. It was a surprisingly delicate feature in someone who’d lived such a hard life. Certainly, she often seemed intense, but in this moment there was real vulnerability written in her face. 

“And you?” She asked. “You told me once that you were in love with Finn. That him loving me would make that impossible.”

A part of him wanted to argue that he’d never really said that, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t a time to argue. “It doesn’t. It really doesn’t.” And the more surprising part: “I don’t mind if you’re still in love with Ben, either. I’m not, but, y’know.”

She leaned across the table and kissed him. The distance between them made it awkward, and at the angle it was their noses had almost crashed together. Trying to lean in without opening his eyes, Poe’s sleeve went in his noodles. Finn exhaled desperately at his side. When Rey pulled back and offered him the second kiss, Poe understood the sight that had drawn that sound from his lips. They were both so beautiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What was happening behind the scenes, this whole time:
> 
> Rey, internally: oh no, why are they both so hot????
> 
> Ben, hovering ominously: oh yes, they’re both so hot. You should tell them you want to bonnneeeee
> 
> Obi-Wan, long suffering: not again.


	3. Finn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn is good boy, Ben is bad boy who means well. Anakin is awkward weirdo, but hey, he’s the one of these idiots who seduced a Queen of Naboo, thank-you-very-much. Rose is too god for all of them but is too much of an indulgent romantic to object.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A dang happy ending, if I do say so myself.

Talking to Rey’s ghosts had gotten easier over the last year. He still couldn’t see most of them, but Anakin had become a steady presence in his life – somewhat disconcertingly – and Ben stopped by every so often. He seemed to find it harder than the others, but he was trying for Rey and Finn appreciated that. He had heard Luke and the General, upon occasion, but the rest mostly left him alone. He knew when they were there, and that was it. 

For that reason, he got a chilled feeling on the back of his neck that told him Ben wanted to talk. Since he was in a meeting with ambassadors from six worlds – his life was weird, now. At least being a Stormtrooper hadn’t involved politics – he ignored the demand until he was back in his and Poe’s quarters, and could meditate in private. Poe was on Lothal, and even if he’d been there, only Finn and Rey, and sometimes her apprentice Lian, could hear the ghosts. Sitting on the bed, he crossed his legs to begin.

Finn closed his eyes, and released all the day’s work into the force. He steadied and slowed his breath, letting the rhythms of his heart beat through his entire body. He counted his breaths, the duration of every in and out, until his body was steady and a little numb. Then and only then did he open his eyes, and meet Ben’s. 

In death, the ghost that had been Ben Solo usually dressed like a rebel rather than the tyrant he’d died looking like. His long hair was tied back in a low tail, while his still obviously black clothing seemed tattered and scruffy, jacket and trousers well worn. He looked far more like his father than he ever had in life. 

“You should ask Rey to marry you,” Ben said, as if this was a perfectly normal way to begin a conversation. 

“What?”

He rolled his eyes dramatically. “I said you should ask Rey to marry you. You know, your girlfriend, who you’ve been dating for a year and in love with for who knows how long.”

Finn knew exactly how long. It hadn’t been right at the very beginning, but soon after. On the Falcon, when he was finally understanding that he was a free man. Before they’d met Han. He’d fallen in love with her indomitable spirit, the force of her will. 

“I know who she is,” Finn muttered, “I’m just wondering why you’ve decided that I should marry her. And why do you get to decide that anyways?”

They all knew why Ben got to be part of this. He was part of Rey, and no matter how much bad blood there was between Poe, Finn, and Kylo Ren, Ben was the reason that she was still alive, still with them. Without Ben, they would have been alone. Without Ben, Finn knew, he would have been dead, too. Poe would have been alone. For that, Ben had earned himself a lifetime – deathtime – right to meddle in their affairs.

“I get to decide because I’m smarter and more experienced than you,” Ben said, like an asshole, “and I’ve decided now because if Mace says one more word about how Jedi are celibate and she really needs to run off and restart a monastic order that died for a reason, I’m going to wipe him out of the force entirely.”

And that was why Finn was glad he usually only talked to Ben and Anakin, no matter how crazy they both were. “Well that’s irritating of him.”

By the look on Ben’s face, irritating was an understatement. He folded his legs under himself, hovering in the air so that his eyes were level with Finn’s.

“If you marry her, then they can’t tell her to change her mind. I don’t think Mace really understands why Rey thinks all this is so important.”

It seemed a bit of a melodramatic response, but Finn supposed he wasn’t the one who had to listen to it all the time. “And how do you think Rey actually feels about this?”

“Rey,” said Ben, long suffering, “could never in a thousand years imagine that all three of us love her enough to spend the rest of your lives with her. But since you obviously do, and Dameron obviously does, I don’t see why we should let her labour under the delusion that you two aren’t completely committed to her at this point.”

The ghost had a point. Now the only question was: how did one actually go about proposing marriage anyways?

“You just give them matching rings, and then have a big party,” offered Rose, whose solution to life’s problems usually involved physical ornamentation and the inclusion of as many team members as possible. They were drinking cocktails in her room after work, sitting on the bed against the wall. Rose, as a Captain, had the option for a bigger room, but since she was usually on her own ship anyways, she’d never requested improved berth on any of the others.

Finn thunked his head back against the bulkhead. If only they hadn’t broken up. He thought that if he’d stayed with Rose, there would be a lot less ghosts judging the quality of his marriage proposal. 

“Will Poe and Rey even understand what I mean by that?” They were from radically different worlds. 

Rose considered the proposition. “Poe will, for sure. He’s been in the Resistance forever, there’s no way he wouldn’t know what that means. Rey though…” She picked up her comm. “Do you want me to ask someone to dig up anything we might have on Jakku’s marriage customs. Or Jedi marriage customs. Whichever.”

It was a frivolous use of government resources. But, well, the last general had been the mother of their worst adversary, so ‘conflict of interest’ wasn’t really in the Resistance’s vocabulary. “Both.”

It turned out that, if there were ever Jedi marriage customs, the record of them was long gone. As for the marriage customs of Jakku, they were purely contractual. A negotiation between the head of one family and the head of another. Since Finn and Rey were both the only members of their respective families, that didn’t help much either. Poe did have a family they could negotiate with, but since Rey and Finn would be negotiating for themselves, it seemed insulting to treat Poe like a piece of meat. 

“You’re overthinking this,” Anakin told him one morning, as he meditated. Finn reached into the force for serenity and calm. 

“How so?”

As if it was obvious, he said, “she’s a Skywalker. The only marriage custom we have is that you should probably remember to ask first.”

There was a story there, and it wasn’t one Finn ever wanted to hear. “But–”

Anakin interrupted him with a single raised hand. “Trust me. It’s the only way to be sure you aren’t completely misunderstood. Do something nice for her if you want, with food or flowers or jewels, but really just ask with your words. Tell her that you love and esteem her, and why you want to marry her, and then do. It isn’t that hard.”

He was probably right. “And Poe?”

Anakin, far too corporeal for a ghost, reached out and took Finn’s hand in his own. “Come on,” he said, “no time like the present to figure that out.”

In the end, Finn did a bit of everything. He received permission from a surprised but delighted Kes Dameron, and from Lian, who was the only thing close to a living family member Rey had. Then he bought three rings – “Gold,” Rose insisted, as she helped him choose the design – and a bunch of flowers. Rose, who was the greatest friend he could ever have asked for and, also, a total romantic, helped Finn to decorate his and Poe’s quarters, garlands of flowers like they would have had on Naboo, bowls of water like lovers shared on Tatooine, where water was too rare to give to someone you didn’t love. When she left, Finn dressed in the brocade jacket they’d given him for his birthday, and set about cooking. 

Poe and Rey arrived back from their mission – diplomatic, as they all were these days – looking tired, and as beautiful as ever. Stepping into their quarters, both of their eyes widened in shock. The thickness in the air told Finn that Ben was with them too. He felt pleased. Finn agreed with the ghost. 

“You,” Poe said, looking in awe at the garlands of orange flowers, “are a miracle worker.” BB-8, who was rolling at his heel, chirped in agreement. 

Well, BB was basically their first kid so maybe he deserved to be here for this. 

Rey was staring at the bowls of water. Maybe Anakin or Luke had told her what they meant, or maybe Jakku, where water was equally scarce, had the same custom. 

Finn’s entire body felt numb. Anakin, who’d entered behind Rey, gave him a thumbs-up over her shoulder. Technically, the other ghosts weren’t supposed to come into their quarters except for in emergencies, but this was a kind of special occasion. Finn stilled himself as he usually did to touch the force, and began. 

“So, uh, I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do when I started to plan this, so I sort of decided to do everything?” He gestured to the room. “I don’t know where I’m from, but when I’m with you it doesn’t matter because I have a home. It’s this, and us, and I love you. If I were from Tatooine, I would give you my water. If I were from Naboo, I would spell out my love in flowers. If I were from Jakku I would barter your hand from your closest male relative in exchange for credits or livestock.” She laughed, a nervous, choking noise. “Rey, Poe, will you marry me?” There was a pause in which Finn remembered there were rings in his pocket and pulled them out, all three glittering in his shaking palm. “I really did ask Poe’s dad for his hand, and he already agreed, so, uh, in case that matters?”

Poe’s eyebrows were making a valiant retreat towards his hairline, but it didn’t stop him from saying, “yes. Absolutely.”

One down. Everybody looked at Rey. Finn could feel her nerves thrumming in the force. He said, “I won’t love you any less if you say no. And I won’t expect you to love Ben any less if you say yes.”

The ghost, not quite visible to Finn, curled through the air. Rey closed her eyes for a second and said, “he wants me to say yes.”

That wasn’t a yes. Poe said, “we know we can’t ever be what he is, but we’d like to be tied to you too. In every way we can be.”

She was crying silently, tears tracing down her cheeks. A wind in the force that must have been Ben wiped them away. Anakin put a metal hand on her shoulder. BB-8 chriped and nuzzled against her leg. There was a silent moment, still as the desert but for the thrumming of the ship’s engines beneath them. Then she spoke, finally, for herself. 

“You are so much more to me than you know.” She grabbed Poe’s hand and pulled him around the dining table until they were all mere inches apart. Leaning in to kiss Finn she whispered, “yes,” against his lips. 

It was more than enough to build a future on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I think Finn is force sensitive but, like, low-level. So he can’t really see most of the force ghosts, especially those who are really just impressions, ghosts in the machine like Mace Windu or the other consular Jedi who never knew how to do this. But Anakin is the force equivalent of a battering ram so he’s a little harder to miss. And Ben’s still tied to Rey, so Finn’s become quite attuned to him. That’s my bullshit explanation anyways.


End file.
